US probes IBM over bribery claims

07.05.2013

In our round-up of some of the top tech stories from the weekend, Intel’s ‘Silvermont’ chip design focuses on mobile, the US Justice Department is investigating IBM over bribery allegations, and Zynga looks to Farmville 2 to turn its fortunes around.

Intel unveils low-power mobile chip design

Intel has revealed the latest in its arsenal to compete in the mobile space, a new low-power chip architecture, AllThingsD reported.

‘Silvermont’ focuses on devices like tablets and smartphones. Such mobile devices’ limitations on battery life require system-on-a-chip specifications made with energy efficiency in mind.

The design incorporates Intel’s ‘tri-gate’ 3-D transistor technology, which essentially lets the company create smaller, faster processors which can perform at a lower voltage with less power leakage.

Intel claims an improvement of about five times lower power consumption over its current Atom core mobile chips, with three times more peak performance.

U.S. Justice Department probes IBM over bribery allegations

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating IBM over corruption claims in several European and Asian countries, according to a government document, ZDNet reported.

In IBM’s latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), further bribery charges are being added to the ones it already faces from the SEC over its activities in China and South Korea.

The new investigation pertains to allegations of corruption in Argentina, Bangladesh, Poland, and Ukraine.

The April 30 filing reveals IBM is being investigated to see whether or not it violates the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which makes it illegal under U.S. law to bribe foreign government officials to win business, even if the acts are not committed on US soil.

IBM said it is co-operating with the justice department on the investigation.

Zynga’s gameplan relies on FarmVille 2, says CEO

Social-gaming company Zynga is turning to its game FarmVille 2 to revive its ailing operation, CNET reported.

Zynga’s revenue jumped to US$1.2bn in 2012, but losses continue to mount.

A key component to the turnaround plan is to give FarmVille players the same experience on mobile as on desktop.

“The ideal is to make that one seamless experience between web and mobile so you can take your farming experience from work to home,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus told Reuters. “We’re having to retool and reinvent around our process and technology.”

Who is using Facebook?

94% of people surveyed are

Facebook users. Everybody from small to medium to large multi national businesses is using the current biggest social media platform to target their customer. Companies use Facebook in different way shapes and forms. Some use advertising in the ‘banner’ on the right hand side of the screen:

Where does Facebook stand on the social media rankings?

Facebook is currently in first place in the social media ranking with according to the Social Times Facebook has 7012.9 million visitors every month.

What are Facebook demographic users?

60% of Facebook account users are men while 40% are women social networkers. 11% of Facebook’s users are in the 12-17year old age bracket, 29% of people are 18-25, 23% are 26-34, 18% 35-44, 12% are 45-54 years old while 7% of users are over 55 years old

PresentMe.com

Who is using Present Me?

Present Me is a really easy way to record and share your presentations using a website. Present me is ranked 269,467 globally according to Alexa.com. It is a free website and is used for education purposes, in the business world, for personal uses such as making CV’s demonstrating “me in two minutes”. Here is an article about Richard Garnett co-founder of Present Me discussing things like how long did it take to create present me, future plans and who is the team working behind present me and how did you all meet.

Here is a link to a recent present me presentation I complied as part of my course work in the communications Model on the online scam, commonly known as Phishing.

Who is using Instagram?

Before late last year Instagram was only available on smart phones. Now with the launch of its website Instagram is now available online. Here is an interesting article sourced on Silicon Republic about Instagram new features.

Instagram is a young fun way of sharing your photos with the rest of the World. But Instagram isn’t for everybody. “By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly (“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.” –wired.com

Here is a direct link to my Instagram account here where I follow accounts of relevance to college work such as Urban Decay for my IMC project and The Beauty Booth for an upcoming communications audit assignment.

What are Instagram demographic users?

According to an article sourced on American people: 18% of people have Instagram compared to 94% of people having a Facebook account, 55% of people use Twitter, 44% on Google Plus while 52% of people surveyed use Pinterest. According to alexa.com’s traffic rank, Instagram is ranked number 76 globally.

YouTube

Who is using YouTube?

YouTube is used for everything else days: weather its for humor, watching music videos, a form of television, entertainment and a form of learning. Recently as keeping up with the latest products my IMC organization I am currently study I was make up tutorials by make up artists who is constantly using the latest Urban Decay products.

Where does YouTube stand on the social media rankings?

YouTube is the third most searched site, behind Google at first place and Facebook in second place. Here is an interesting podcast which allows you ‘build your brand’ on YouTube.

What are YouTube demographic users?

YouTube is used evenly among all demographic age groups but tends to be dominated by users of the age of 18-40. 25% of Australian large businesses used YouTube as a marketing tool in 2010 says this article. article.

Who is using Delicious?

Marketers are major users of delicious. As it makes researching easily as you can store all of your relevant information in one book marked place. Delicious was founded in 2003 and later sold to Yahoo in 2008 and finally sold in 2011 to the creators of YouTube: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Businesses are the main users of Delicious as it has the following five functions: Research, collaboration, filters content, social networking and website traffic. Delicious is ranked in 670 places globally according to Alexa.com.

Here is a link to my personnel Delicious account, showing some of the interesting articles I have bookmarked from Silicon Republic relating to my IMC project.

Pinterest

Who is using Pinterest and its demographics?

“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes and organize the favorite recipes”

The people who use Pinterest according to ignite social media are mostly females at 80% while 20% of users are males. 28% of users are 25-34 and 35-44 while 25% of users signed up to the book marking social site are in the age bracket of 45-54.

Rankings: According to Alexa, Pinterest is ranked 35th globally and in 14th position in the US

WordPress is an easy application to set up and start blogging on. WordPress is the first application I have used to Blog on. Initially when I started blogging I started documenting things relating to my IMC project on Urban Decays Make up, eye shadow pallet: Naked. Here is a link to my wordpress account.

WordPress Demographics users:

As sources from WordPress Stats it is published that 66% of Word press’s bloggers blog in English, 8.7% Spanish, 6.5% in Portuguese, 3.5% in Indonesian, 2% Italian, 1.8% in German, 1.4% French, 1.1% Russian, 1.1% Vietnamese and 1% of people blog in Swedish.

Twitter

Social Media Rankings:

Twitter is ranked number two in the social media ranking of 2012 behind Facebook maintaining first place. Twitter is the fastest growing social network with 24.1 million tweets alone during the Super Bowl last week.

Twitters demographics of its users:

There are 6% more female tweeters than male tweeters. 73.7% of Twitter account holders are in the 15-25-age bracket, while 14.9% of users are 26-35 years old. Ireland made it into the ‘Top 10 countries with highest number of Twitter users’ at number 10. While the United States was ranked number 1, followed by the united Kingdom in second and Australia in third place of highest twitter account holders. –Beevolve.com

Who is using twitter?

A lot of people around the World use Twitter. People such as celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Cheryl Cole. Sports players all over the World from: Brian O’ Driscoll, Usain Bolt, Serena Williams to Cristiano Ronaldo. Businesses and organizations, such as: SimplyZesty, Urban Decay, Dunnes, Tesco UK and Paddy Power. Here is a link to My Twitter Account.

Organizations relevant to us who are using twitter to blog on a daily basis are SimplyZesty a ‘breaking social media news, guides, insights and video in European media agency’ – Simply Zesty’s Twitter account

YouTube Clips

Here is a YouTube tutorial explaining how one uses Twitter as an Internet application. This YouTube video explains and demonstrates the basics on how to set up and make a Twitter account, how to follow people, send tweets and retweet others tweets. As I have been using the Twitter application for some time now I find it easy to navigate through but as a beginner it can be difficult to maneuver. Hope this helps!

Tumblr

I love Tumblr, as it is very similar to Instagram an Internet application that I use on a daily basis. Tumblr is a social media site, which allows users to upload multimedia and allows you to follow other people’s blogs. David Karp is Tumblers CEO and Founder.

Who is using Tumblr?

Tumbler had over 77 million blogs in December 2012. Major global organizations that are regular users of Tumblr are: Twitter, The Today Show, Teen Vogue and Vogue, W Magazine, Washington Post, Glamour, The New Yorker, IBM, Universal Music, Huggies etc.

Where does Tumblr stand on the social media rankings?

Tumblr’s audience is said to be young Internet users. 55% of Tumblr’s Internet audiences are under 35 years old while 30% of users are 35-49. The average user of Tumblr tends to earn less than the web average of $30,000. 9.4million people visit Tumblr everyday while 5.4million of these people live outside the U.S.A –Mashable.com

“Urban Decay is the largest independently owned color cosmetic company in the United States” and was established 15 years for the simple reason: Sandy Lerner, her business manager David Soward and Wende Zomnir a creative businesswomen saw a gap in the beauty market of traditional beauty products which were dominated by the shades pink, red and beige. Urban Decay cosmetics were inspired by elements of the urban landscape, they were different to the norm and as result products were titled: Smog, Rust and Acid Rain. Encouraging the dramatic change in the cosmetic industry Urban Decay released their line in January 1996 of 10 lipsticks and 12 nail varnishes. Urban Decay has expanded not only in the USA but also globally to Canada, Europe and the Middle East. -Urban Decay.com